Michael Schmidt
Since working at the European level in the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group, one of my concerns has been to ensure that German financial market participants also play a proactive and constructive role in shaping sustainable finance – in Brussels as well as on behalf of Germany as a place to do business and as a financial centre. I am therefore pleased that the German government’s 2019 initiative to develop Germany’s own sustainable finance strategy, with the help of a broad-based group of experts, has highlighted the importance of sustainable finance for Germany. Because in an industry-based economy, in particular, it is essential that environmental and social structural change succeeds. Investors have already started to rate companies based on how fit they are for the future in the context of this transformation. It is therefore appropriate that the idea of the Great Transformation runs through all the SFC’s recommendations. In this way, sustainability will become mainstream and Germany will become a driver of sustainable finance in Europe.